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THE MINISTRY OF X, 
"X A STAINLESS LIFE 



A Tribute to 
the Late Pres* 
ident McKinley 



COMPLIMENTS OF THE FOR.T DODGE MESSEAfGER 



Speech delivered byJOMATHAMP.DOLLIVER 
at a memorial meeting held under the auspices 
of the City of Chicago at the Coliseum, on the 
evening of Sunday, September 22, 1901. X, X 



PRIS51 Of THI MESSCNJIH 



ET T 

•6 

Ik 



Copv\l 






The Ministry of 
A Stainless Life 



Jh Tribute to the Late 
President McKj-nley. jfi 



Speech delivered by JONJiTHMM 
P. DO LLIVER at a memorial meets 
ing held under the auspices of the 
City of Chicago at the Coliseum, on 
the evening of Sunday, Sept. 22, 190I 



Re-published from 
Chicago Record :: 
Herald. Sept.23,1901 



Compliments of 
the Fort Dodge 
:: :: Messenger 



My Fellow Gitizens : 

Three days ago, near by the house in which he lived, with a 
multitude which no man could number, I stood by the grave of 
William McKinley, and, while among so many voices I would pre- 
fer to remain silent, yet I am grateful for the opportunity to join 
with you in this memorial, and to speak a few words in reverent 
eulogy of the statesman and the man. 

There will be occasion enough to make inquiry into the 
causes of the enormous offense against mankind of which the 
president of the United States was the victim. But it cannot 
be out of the way, even at such a time as this, to recognize that 
in the midst of modern society there are a thousand forces man- 
ifestly tending toward the moral degradation out of which this 
wicked hand was raised to kill the chief magistrate of the Amer- 
ican people. Other presidents of the United States have been 
murdered, but the men who did the deed bore such obvious marks 
of a diseased mind that one of them, at least, received the pen- 
alties of the law rather than its compassion, only because, in the 
administration of justice, the line which separates the maniac 
from the murderer is drawn with a rather clumsy hand. 

The government of the United States has given no atten- 
tion and the government of the several states but little, to the 
activity in many of our cities of organizations, inconsiderable in 



—2- 

nnmbers. which boldly profess to seek the destruction of all gov- 
ernment and all law. Their creed is openly written in many 
languages, including our own, and its devotees the world over do 
not try to conceal the satisfaction which they take in these deeds 
of darkness. 

The crime of the 6th of September, though evidently com- 
mitted under the influence if not the direction of others, easily 
baffles the courts, because, being without the common motives 
of murder, it leaves no tracks distinct enough to be followed, 
and for that reason escapes through the very tenderness of our 
system of jurisprudence towards persons accused on suspicions, 
however grave. 

A government like ours is always slow to move and often 
awkward in its motions, but it can be trusted to find effective 
remedies for conditions like these, at least after they become in- 
tolerable. But these remedies, in order to be effective, must 
not invade the sense of justice which is universal, nor the tra- 
ditions of civil liberty which we have inherited from our fathets. 

The bill of rights, written in the English language, stands 
for too many centuries of sacrifice, too many battle fields sanc- 
tified by blood, too many hopes of mankind reaching toward the 
ages to come, to be mutilated in the least in order to meet the 
case of a handful of miscreants whose names nobody can pro- 
nounce. Whether the secret of this ghastly atrocity rests in 
the keeping of one man or many we may never know, but if the 
president was picked out by hidden counsels for the fate which 
overtook him, there is a mournful satisfaction in the fact that in 
his life, as well as in his death, he represented American man- 
hood at its best. 

1 have studied with some degree of care such literature as 
the working creed of anarchy has given to the general public, 
and in all the high places of the earth it could not have chosen 
a victim whose life among men has made a more complete ans- 
wer to its incoherent program of envy and hatred and idleness 
and crime. Without intending to do so. it has strengthened the 
whole framework of the social system, not only by showing its 
own face, but by lifting up before the eyes of all generations this 
choice and master spirit of our times, simple and beautiful in his 
life, lofty and serene in death. 



— 3— 

The creed of anarchy in common with all kindred schools 
of morbid social science teaches that only the sons of the rich 
find their lives worth living under our institutions, and therefore, 
in order to emancipate the poor, these institutions must be over- 
thrown. The biography of William McKinley records the suc- 
cessful battle of one young man in the open arena of the world, 
and tells the story of his rise from the little schoolhouse, where 
he earned the money to complete his education, to the highest 
civic position known among men. One life like that put into the 
light of day where the young men of America can see it, will do 
more for the safety of society than all the processions that ever 
marched through the streets of Chicago, carrying red flags, can 
ever do it harm. 

The creed of anarchy knows no country, feels in its with- 
ered heart no pulse of patriotism, saes under no skies the beauty 
of any flag — not even ours, that blessed symbol now draped in 
mourning which lights even this time of national affliction with 
the splendor of the great republic. 

William McKinley, long before he came to man's estate, 
was taught what the flag means ; that it is worth fighting for, 
and if need be, dying for : and he laid down his school books, 
gave his name to an enlisting regiment, and before the age of 20 
was a seasoned veteran in the broken ranks which we saw bent 
with years, marching as a guard of honor to his grave. He did 
not win a very high renown, if honor be measured by the com- 
missions which he brought home, but he earned them all on the 
field of battle, and he is promoted now to be an immortal com- 
rade of Grant and Sherman. 

The creed of anarchy rebels against the state, and with in- 
credible folly proposas that every man shall be a law unto him- 
self. It is more mischievous because more pretentious than the 
common levels of crime, for without disdaining the weapons of 
the ruffian it does not hesitate to seek shelter in the respecta- 
bility that belongs to the student and the reformer. 

It ought not to be forgotten that these conspiracies, working 
out their nefarious plans in the dens and caves of the eatth. en- 
joy an unconscious co-operation and side-partnership with every 
lawless influence which is abroad in the world. Legislators who 
betray the commonwealth, judges who poison the fountains of 



— 4— 
justice, municipal authorities which come to terms with crime — 
all these are regular contributors to the campaign fund of anarchy. 
That howling mass, whether in Kansas or Alabama, that 
assembly of wild beasts, dancing in drunken carousal about the 
ashes of some negro malefactor, is not adding to the security of 
society ; it is taking away from society the only security it has. 
It belongs to the unenrolled reserve corps of anarchy in the 
United States. Neither individuals, nor corporations, nor mobs, 
can take the law into their own hands without identifying them- 
selves with this more open but hardly less odious attack upon 
the fortress of the social order. The words which came spon- 
taneously to the lips of William McKinley as he sank under mor- 
tal wounns and saw the infuriated crowd pressing upon his as- 
sailant, ought to be repeated in the ears of the officers of the 
peace from one end of the land to the other, in all the years 
that are to come —"Let no one hurt him : let the law take its 
course." 

The creed of anarchy teaches that popular government is a 
fraud and that enactments made by the people for themselves 
are no more sacred than arbitrary decrees promulgated by 
tyrants and enforced by bayonets. Professor Ely. in his work 
on the labor movement, preserves this expression from the 
editorial page of the chief organ of anarchy in the United States. 
"The republican party is run by robbers and in the interest 
of robbery ; the democratic party is run by thieves and in the 
interest of thievery. Therefore vote no more." 

Each proposition is an infamous lie. Yet nobody can deny 
that the sensational press of both parties has contributed 
enough to the volume of current scandal and hearsay to make 
these infernal slanders acceptable to all enemies of the human 
race. 

Anarchy says "Vote no more." The example of William 
McKinley. who in a public service of more than a quarter of a 
century, half of it in the heat of controversial politics, never 
once disparaged the motives of those who differed from him. 
nor spoke an unkind word of an opponent : who allowed neither 
the cares of business nor the fatigues of travel to nullify his in- 
fluence as a citizen, and never failed at any election to stand 
uncovered before the ballot box in the precinct where he had 



— 5— 

the right to vote, has familiarized his countrymen already with 
the higher ideals of civic duty which dedicate the heart and 
brain and conscience of America to an intelligent interest in 
public affairs. 

The creed of anarchy despises the obligations of the mar- 
riage contract, impeaches the integrity of domestic life, enters 
into the homes of the people to pull down their altars and sub- 
ject the family relation, which is the chief bond of society, to 
the caprices of the loafer and the libertine. In all these things 
it has an alliance implied if not expressed with every variation 
of that rotten public opinion which in many American states has 
turned the courts of equity into a daily scene of perjury and 
treason against the hearthstones of the community : a treason 
so flagrant that a year ago. for the accommodation of a single 
man the legislature of Florida was induced to descend below the 
level of all paganisms and all barbarisms by so amending the 
law of divorce as to permit a winter resident to legally desert 
the wife of his youth, not on account of any fault of hers, but 
because of the pathetic burdens which she bore. 

I count it of infinite value to every decent form of civiliza- 
tion that against this background of unworthy living, from the 
front porch of a little cottage covered with vines yonder at Gan- 
ton. the outline sketch of two lives has been thrown, so perfect 
in their fidelity to one another that good men everywhere stand 
in silence before it, while the womanhood of the world, seeing 
the knightliness of love which alters not. draws near, from sta- 
tions high and low. to salute the picture with the benediction of 

its tears. 

The fatal word in the creed of anarchy is "atheism." Until 
that word is spoken, until all sense of the moral government of 
the universe and the spiritual significance of human life is lost. 
it is impossible to conceive, much less to execute this malignant 
propaganda against the rights of mankind. It is not necessary 
to think or speak unkindly of the noted men, many of them liv- 
ing lives of scholarly seclusion remote from the practical, every 
day problems which confront the police of all countries, who in 
the last generation have made the most influential contributions 
to the speculative literature of atheism. I doubt whether their 
influence will be permanent, either for good or evil. 



— 6— 

No man who brings nothing with him except a blind faith in 
natural laws, which nobody made, and nobody administers, will 
ever find a permanent discipleship in a world like this. It is a 
misfortune that their works have had the most influence among 
those who have been least able to understand them. 

I look upon it at least as a passing disadvantage for us that 
they have been translated into the language of common life by a 
famous American, now dead and gone, who in the days of his 
strength was the most captivating popular orator who ever spoke 
our tongue. On taking the chair as president of the American 
Secular Union he uttered these words : "Away with the old non- 
sense about free moral agency : a man is no more responsible 
for his character than for his height : for his conduct than for 
his dreams." It requires no very deep investigation to find in 
such a sentiment the seed of all anarchies, beginning with ex- 
plosions in the streets of Chicago and ending with chaos come 
again. 

As I have heard the prayers which have been offered and 
the sermons which have been preached beside the dead body of 
William McKinley, 1 have felt more and more the consolation 
which comes from knowing that if indeed his assassination was 
^n incident of the standing challenge of atheism against the 
peace and order of society it could not. now that Gladstone is 
no more, have chosen a sacrifice more fit to illustrate the no- 
bility of human character, nurtured in the fear of God and edu- 
cated from the cradle in the law of Christ. The new national 
hymn which came to the hearts of the American people from 
the chamber where the good man died, instantly brought to my 
mind lines which 1 heard him utter many years ago in a political 
speech when referring to the enlistment of the Union army. 

"How near to grandeur is our dust. 

How close to God is man : 
When duty whispers low. Thou must ! 
The youth replies 1 can." 
A long acquaintance with the late president, in the intimacy of a 
personal friendship which ended only with his life, saves me from that 
error of judgment which in some quarters underrated his abilities and 
underestimated the value of his public services; but standing here, be- 
fore yet the wreaths have withered which cast their fading beauty upon 
his grave, I declare my solemn belief that no achievement of his great. 



— ?— 

career, no victory of his epoch-making record at our capitol will weigh 
so much for the welfare of the world as the everlasting ministry of the 
stainless life which he lived in the faith of the mother who taught him 
first to repeat the words of the Master. "Thy will be done." 

You have read the masterpiece of prose fiction, how Jean Valjean, 
an outcast from the faces of men and the kennels of dogs, came one 
night to the house of a Christian bishop, not a mere titled official of the 
church, but a man into whose face when he was asleep came the divine 
light of a pure heart. "Monsieur Cure." said the man, "you do not 
despise me ; you open your house for me ; you light your candles for 
me, yet I have not concealed from you my name or where I came from 
and how miserable 1 am." "Sir," said the bishop, "this is not my 
house, it is the house of Christ. It asks no man whether he has a 
name, but whether he has an affliction. Besides, before you told me 
your name I knew it." "What," answered the man, "you knew my 
name?" "Yes," answered the bishop, -your name is 'My Brother.' " 

The other day, after the cortege had passed, after the vast pro- 
cession, with its pomp and ceremony, had gone its way and the night 
was coming down, I thought I would go back myself to the place where 
they had laid him and look at the flowers, which not only hid the tomb, 
but illuminated the whole landscape around it ; and as I stood there in 
the twilight and the shadows fell heavier about me, there kept running 
through my mind a strange saying out of the old Hebrew Scriptures, 
which I had never understood before; "Surely the wrath of man shall 
praise Thee; the remainder of wrath shalt Thou restrain ;" and I could 
not help believing that the day is drawing nearer than we think, when 
this distracted world shall know, and what is better, shall feel within 
itself, in its literature, in its laws, in its politics, in the investment of its 
capital, in the performance of its daily labor, in the triumphs of its 
learning, in the progress of the arts which have been touched by the 
white fingers of its genius, that the earth upon which we walk, once 
pressed by the weary feet of the workingman of Nazareth, is after all 
only the house of Christ, and every man's name "M.y Brother " 



OCT 21 1901 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



013 788 326 



